Everything you learned about the Black Death in school was not wrong – well, of course some of it was, but it was wrong well before the results of this project came out in a press release. It is much more likely (and not a new theory at all) that the Black Death consisted of both bubonic AND pneumonic plague (and even septaecemic in some cases) and therefore spread by both insect vectors (like rat fleas) and by humans through infected droplets. It is also incredibly important to remember that the Black Death affected many cities and countries over a very long period of time – so what is true for one place and time may not be so for others.

You are not the only one! I had a quick chat with some people via Twitter about this topic. It is not uncommon to picture ‘plague pits’ as heaps of haphazard burials, when in actual fact the earlier mass burials (c. 14th century) are much more ordered – more ‘trenches’ than ‘pits’. Many individuals were also buried in single inhumation or multiple burials (with 2-3 individuals). This is pretty much everything that my thesis is about.😀